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90

Nintendo Life

As great as the original Super Mario Kart release was, Nintendo really managed to outdo it in just about every facet imaginable. The game play is deeper, the visuals are more detailed, and the musical score is as catchy as ever. If you've ever wondered why so many game fans hold Mario Kart 64 as the best of the series, you only need take the game for a spin on the Virtual Console to see what all the fuss is truly about. It's easily one of the best Nintendo 64 releases of them all and an absolute must-have for any Mario Kart fan.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing really wrong with the new Mario Kart - the increasingly rotund plumber and his jolly crew have never looked and sounded so good. And from Wario's penguin-like mumblings to the glittering crown on the Princess'- head, it's obvious that the design team was plenty willing to get down and dirty with the presentation aspects of the game. The addition of more detailed sliding techniques and a few new nasty things to distract your opponents are welcome features. However, once you get past the predictable new additions, you begin to realize that there's really not much depth to Mario Kart 64.

Mario Kart 64 is an immensely enjoyable game and one of the most entertaining multiplayer racing experiences ever to hit consoles, but this Virtual Console edition suffers from numerous problems that will disappoint many players. The time trial ghost problem is something that really hurts that particular game mode and the speed issue in multiplayer races could surely have been sorted out prior to release. Still, for £7 you'll be hard pushed to find a multiplayer game that offers this much entertainment.

Mario Kart 64 arrived in America almost exactly 10 years ago, and the fans found it immediately. The game was a phenomenal sales success for Nintendo, selling over a million copies in just its first two months on the market, and paving the way for more great multiplayer games (like GoldenEye) to come later that same year. If you never owned an original Kart cartridge, consider this download. But if you've still got the old N64, four dust-covered controllers and the game itself sitting in a closet somewhere, do some digging. This re-release comes close to capturing the full spirit of the original version, but playing it old-school remains superior.

Mario Kart 64 offers some nice tracks, some fairly good controls (although boosting round corners can often feel a bit mixed on the sensitivity front), some decent graphics and tunes, and some annoying modes. If the modes were sorted and gave more of an incentive to play, then this would have been a lot better, as it stands though, there's much better multiplayer fun out there for 1000 points.